This documentary opens with insightful comments on the “vivifying overlap” of punk and queer people and community. The observation brings to mind neuroqueer theory.

…intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering.

Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities

A lot of the ideals of being punk are very applicable and important to being queer because I personally am very against assimilation.

Grayson Michael Harper, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

vivifying = enliven or animate: outings vivify learning for children.

Another vivifying overlap is the overlap between queer and neurodivergent people and our collective liberation.

…plenty of autistic people are LGBTQ and experience a double portion of discrimination. The desire to eliminate the traits that make autistic people unique is rooted in the same impulse to suppress people from affirming their gender identity or sexuality.

We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation

Queer and neurodivergent liberation are entwined.

🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation

This documentary highlights vivifying overlaps and sets them in the context of community.

My favorite themes in punk documentaries and biographies are:

• find your people
• community
• community of practice
• scenius
• community care
• chosen family
• belonging
• mutual aid
• DIY, bricolage, and pastiche
  

There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

Building safe, inclusive, creative spaces and scenes, together, and learning as you go, that’s the soul of punk, that’s punk at its best.

This Is What Trans Punk Looks Like

No comfort in these girlish ways
But god knows, I can’t change
Disappointed, I know you’ll be
When my soul is set free

We need to keep building community with one another and supporting each other, because without community, we’re fucked.

We need to make it dangerous to oppress us.

THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

Trying desperately not to fall apart
The warmness of your embrace
Shatters my frozen heart
Trying desperately to hold onto your hand
As I’m falling further down this pit of anguish

Be yourself.

There’s love out there for you.

We all love you.

THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

Take a look at yourself

We should be proud of being visible and of refusing to go back into the closet despite the pressure against us.

THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

All the young graves filled
Don't the best all burn out
So bright and so fast?
Full body high
I'm never coming down
Black me out

Yes, we are suffering, but we are stronger in a bigger group, and we shouldn’t isolate ourselves, because that’s what they want us to do by taking away our rights and all that other shit.

Grayson Michael Harper, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

This is for the outcasts, rejects, girls and the queers
For the downtrodden women who have shed their last tears
Fighters, psychos, freaks, and the femmes
For all the transgender ladies in constant transition, cast out
The freaks are coming
The freaks are coming

A huge thing that being trans and queer in Texas has taught me is how to, the skills to, find Community.

Miles St. John, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

One thing that I love about being transgender is that I kind of form my own meaning of it, yet still feel like there’s a sense of belonging and understanding with other trans people.

Kai Sabino, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

Just to latch on to all the queer people and all the trans people around you.

Tobi Carr, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

I didn’t feel like I had anyone, and then realizing that you do, realizing that the people around you support you, and can be your own little family is something just so incredible, that I’d recommend for anyone who’s just trying to figure themselves out.

Tobi Carr, THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

Trans Art and Music

A whole lotta people have been asking for trans art & music recommendations, so here’s a list of my favorites:

bands, both big and small, with 1 or more trans member, all are on streaming platforms: Ballista, G.L.O.S.S, Proun, Homewrecker, Out of Sight, Against Me!, Lacerated, XheresheliesX, pinkie promise

ZINES: Stitch & Strap by Grayson Michael Harper @gmhriot, Diary of A Sista Grrrl @sistagrrrlzine, Temp Tats Magazine (DUH!!!) @temptatszine

THIS IS WHAT TRANS PUNK LOOKS LIKE (full documentary) – YouTube

You speak hate to the easily swayed
But think of me while you masturbate
Roaming round where my darkness lurks
You want me dead but I’ll kill you first